Digital banks have been preparing for this shift. Nubank acquired Hyperplane in July 2024, a Silicon Valley AI company building foundation models for financial behaviour. It later deployed nuFormer, its proprietary credit underwriting model, which delivered a 3x improvement in credit decisioning accuracy over traditional machine learning.

Revolut has launched AIR, an AI-powered assistant designed to move from chat to action. It allows users to freeze cards, set budgets, and book travel through its Swifty bot acquisition, while also supporting AI-powered customer assistance. Starling has also entered the race, launching an agentic AI assistant built with Google Gemini in March 2026.

Two architectural bets are now taking shape in financial services. The first is outside-in, where AI platforms build the intelligence layer and add financial capabilities on top, turning financial institutions into backend infrastructure. The second is inside-out, where fintechs and digital banks build proprietary AI into their own products, using their data, models, and customer relationships as the moat.